Reference: Let Me Harbor my Hatred and Her Lies to You.
TW; mental health and mentions of self harm.
I know that I can’t very well rate myself in any capacity. After all, people are allowed to come to their own conclusion after knowing me for some time. However I refuse to stand idly by as someone insults my character with a false narrative. My mother may not have been here long enough to teach me any street smarts – but that is where my big brother, Absal, came into play. My fierce independence was curated by my mother, however it was my brother who further taught me that I am my own person. As I look back on my younger self through these posts, I can’t help but feel immensely proud of the little girl who managed to over come so much. It saddens me just how rarely little me got any affection during those trying times. I wish I could hug her.
With that said, this woman can be described as the worse scum to have walked among us.
My mother, I’m sure, struggled to determine just who would be a good fit to take care of me after her passing. Given that I was a teenager, I wasn’t given much input on her decisions else I would have tried to push for Absal. He would only have to use the funds she allocated to me so that my childhood home would be taken care of long enough to reach the age where I can take over with my own occupation. For a teen with far too much free time, I could have easily roamed the streets of New York with my friends and get involved in a bad crowd. With my mother in hospice, and my grandmother still fighting her own battle (against stomach cancer) – there was no one to truly watch over me.
To be honest I wasn’t in the least bit tempted into doing much of anything besides staying home. I was anxious around people and struggled to socialize. All of this was understandable given the circumstances. My mom lost her strength soon after my 15th birthday, and I went from having the one person, who cared enough to look after me, to another that could barely spare a moment to answer some concerns I had. It didn’t take too long to catch onto what she was doing…. to say that I was hurt would be an understatement.
(Let’s call this woman Rose)
With my mother in hospice, part of her will was activated so that the funds can be used to pay the necessary bills to keep me and grandma housed. This apartment in old Williamsburg had been my home for my entire life. Losing it still deeply wounds my heart to this day.
Rose made her first mistake by taking my mother’s expensive jewelry case with equally as expensive (if not more) jewelry stored inside. Their sentimental value was limitless as these pieces were heirlooms for my family. However what hurt the most was losing Ama’s gift to me. What kind of heartless individual takes a person’s dead sister’s jewelry? But little did I know; there was more to Rose’s plan.
The only reason why I didn’t lose my childhood home and the inheritance sitting in a bank was because of my brother. Absal caught onto the things Rose was immediately stealing months before my mother’s death. She wasted the money set aside for my Sweet Sixteen* on a stupid car, and the act left me wondering what I could have done to earn this woman’s scorn. Behind my mother’s back, Rose was cold and distant with me. Something that was so odd – given how close I thought we were for more than 5 or so years. My mother had even paid for her kids to come with us to Disney World, Orlando for my 10th birthday, giving them a core memory and leaving me to believe that we became closer to family than just a family friends.
In distress and feeling overwhelmed by the drama surrounding me, I made an effort to get my mother’s jewelry back. I do want to admit that we may have come across as a bit aggressive, but in our defense – we are a stoic type family. Our words may be cold, but we’re harmless. Well, I’m harmless by appearance. Absal is intimidating with his own; a six foot three inch sort of edge lord that hardly ever smiled – and when he did, it doesn’t comfort you much. We confronted her at her apartment, as she lived on the last floor of our apartment building, and demanded our property back as I was the sole heir (as stated in her will). My mother had passed away by this point, and the fact that my final words to her was nothing more than a comforting emphasis that Rose was filling her head with absolute nonsense about me. My anger played a role in confronting her, and I actually wasn’t all that surprised by her response.
My mother passed away having been told lies about my day to day activities. According to Rose, I was roaming the streets, always with a different guy on my arm and doing drugs that I would have never touched. After having been on drugs to treat my cancer and then more drugs to treat the side effects of chemo – and then more drugs to balance the pain that ravaged my body – drugs was the last thing on my mind. I’m often haunted by the question ‘Did my mother believe her? Did she hear me before she passed? Did she hear me telling her the truth?’ I have never suffered a heartbreak greater than when my final moments with my mother was clouded with drama. She didn’t deserve to pass away with that stress weighing on her…
Did no one else step in to help?
No. No one besides Absal had jumped in to help me, a freshly recovered cancer patient at 15 years old and starting high school. It made me feel so alone and unwanted. Casted aside like I meant nothing. Honestly, it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise that my mental health tanked.
Absal petitioned the court to freeze Rose out of my mother’s will. Thankfully my mother had detailed her wishes almost down to the very year of when the money would run out after paying for the Co-Op – and everything was to be placed solely in my name. Rose was to be assigned as a guardian, and given access to one account that would cover basic living expenses. I had things that would have easily helped me maintain a sense of independence. She would have just been responsible to sign documents as as my guardian since I was a minor, but she didn’t even give me a chance.
As the situation began to feel hopeless, in comes a long time family friend who openly took me in and didn’t hesitate to figure things out with Absal so that I had a proper guardian. We’ll call her Belle. Belle had been my older sister’s best friend up until her untimely death at 23 years old. Her loss did put some distance between members of our circle. After years of battling leukemia, it was an understandable action while everyone coped with her loss – an outlook I gained now a an adult. I was much too young to remember Ama, but Belle provided a wonderful summary of her personality – and for what it’s worth, I do appreciate that.
To wrap up this segment, I’m going to jump ahead by a few months. I had not yet spiraled too far into my depression, but that would all soon change when my grandmother was picked up by her last remaining son in order to be tended to down in Puerto Rico. Since I couldn’t live alone, the apartment sat vacant but (I believed) taken care of. I was of the opinion that Absal had settled the matter. I would visit the place every few days for things as I felt it would crowd my already crowded guardian’s apartment down the street. I can’t even tell you what day this was, but I know that it was a rather beautiful and sunny day. I felt balanced emotionally, though I grappled still with having buried my mother some time ago. I can’t ever forget the way my stomach dropped when I saw a large dumpster taking up two spaces in front of my apartment building. I didn’t want to confirm my suspicions but there was no mistaking the items within that bin – Rose had stripped my childhood home down and thrown everything, absolutely everything, out.
I cared more for my mementos than the items; such as photo albums of my family, documents pertaining to my treatments, and other miscellaneous things that occupied a spot in my heart. Were it not for a neighbor, I would have long since forgotten what my mother’s face would have looked like or how I’m practically Ama’s identical twin. This encased my heart in a coldness that practically brought me to my knees, and that is where I began to self harm.
I’m not proud of myself. The scars of those moments still sit prettily along my arm – masked by a tattoo. I felt weak for having resorted to such a tactic, but I was nearing my sixteenth birthday – alone, beaten down and torn apart by my heavy losses. I didn’t know how to manage, and I spoke to no one about my racing thoughts or concerning ideation. Rose did not let me grieve. She did not let me recover. Her greed was endless, and I was nothing more than an unfortunate ant crawling under her boot.
To conclude an incredibly long story – Rose was a heartless leech feeding off of my dying mother as a way to manipulate her into getting the things she wanted.
Forgive me for saying this, but I hope she rots in hell for every sin she committed against me. I can never forgive her for the part she played in making my life a living hell. Had things went in the direction my mother had planned for me, I would have a far better chance in surviving the current world problems. The only lesson I have gotten out of my situation with Rose is that you should always be careful with your pick your of friends. Not even the nicest motherf**ker can’t be trusted these days.
Be your person. Be your advocate.
a Sweet Sixteen* is a (typically) Hispanic tradition where an individual turning 16 (sometimes 15) are treated to a coming of age ceremony with a lot of fan fare, extravagant dresses or outfits and dances.
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